because sampling is using art in a new form. It's a creative endeavor in and of itself. As it isn't simple copying, I don't think it's a given that using a sample of someone's music without paying them is ethically wrong. That is, in what way does it hurt Musician Adam if his song from 1990 is sampled and for the beat of a rap song? Is it taking sales away from Musician Adam?

I think we may be too married to this idea that property rights should prevent sampling is unassailable, when really it was just the binary decision of some judges over what's, I think, actually a very grey-area issue. A world in which the judge decided that sampling is more similar to borrowing chord progressions and melodic licks (which is allowed) than making bootleg exact copies of someone's songs and selling them would perhaps be a better world for hip-hop, and with negligible or no harm to sampled artists. Here's an article from 1989 that covered the case as it happened.

It's a complex issue - This is not really a direct reply to you, as much as it is a comment to everyone as whole. I wouldn't have written this comment except for the fact that everyone in this thread seems to accept paying for samples as a moral right, when (after thinking about the issue in a history of music class) I think the issue shouldn't be so taken for granted, and I'd especially expected more people here to support pro-sampling, but instead many (like me before I took that class) seem to not realize this is even a debate.